"Freakonomics," Vocabulary from Introduction-Chapter 2

This book's subtitle sheds light on its strange title: "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." Collaborating with the journalist Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt calculates the incentives that affect behavior, which leads him to surprising points about people with seemingly different lives. If you want to think like a freak, study this list of words.

The one candidate you won’t contribute to is a sure loser. (Just ask any presidential hopeful who bombs in Iowa and New Hampshire.) So front-runners and
incumbents raise a lot more money than long shots.

Incumbents and front-runners obviously have more cash, but they only spend a lot of it when they stand a legitimate chance of losing; otherwise, why dip into a war chest that might be more useful later on, when a more
formidable opponent appears?

It is well and good to opine or theorize about a subject, as humankind is wont to do, but when moral posturing is replaced by an honest
assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.

Thomas Jefferson noted this while reflecting on the tiny incentive that led to the Boston Tea Party and, in turn, the American Revolution: “So
inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.”

This is a conservative estimate, since the algorithm was able to identify only the most
egregious form of cheating—in which teachers systematically changed students’ answers—and not the many subtler ways a teacher might cheat.

The City College of New York’s championship basketball team, once beloved for its smart and scrappy play, was instantly
reviled when it was discovered in 1951 that several players had taken mob money to shave points—intentionally missing baskets to help gamblers beat the point spread.

It might seem ludicrous to address as large and
intractable a problem as white-collar crime through the life of a bagel man. But often a small and simple question can help chisel away at the biggest problems.

If a company habitually paid below 80 percent, Feldman might post a
hectoring note, like this one: The cost of bagels has gone up dramatically since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, the number of bagels that disappear without being paid for has also gone up. Don’t let that continue.

But soon the Klan evolved into a multi-state terrorist organization designed to frighten and kill emancipated slaves. Among its regional leaders were five former Confederate generals; its
staunchest supporters were the plantation owners for whom Reconstruction posed an economic and political nightmare.

The film quoted a line from A History of the American People, written by a renowned historian: “At last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a
veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

Consider a
scenario in which your loved one has just died and now the funeral director (who knows that you know next to nothing about his business and are under emotional duress to boot) steers you to the $8,000 mahogany casket.

How might you determine whether the lack of
discrimination against blacks and women represents a true absence or just a charade? The answer can be found by looking at other groups that society doesn’t protect as well.

Each site operates a bit differently, but the gist is this: You compose a personal ad about yourself that typically includes a photo, vital statistics, your income range, level of education, likes and dislikes, and so on.

This leaves only about 30 percent of the users with “average” looks, including a
paltry 1 percent with “less than average” looks—which suggests that the typical online dater is either a fabulist, a narcissist, or simply resistant to the meaning of “average.”